


i hear your ship is comin' in

by maddy_does (favefangirl)



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: (tangibly), Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Astrology, Background Ebeneza "Ebb" Petty/Fiona Pitch, Beaches, Betaed, Canonical Character Death, Ebeneza "Ebb" Petty Lives, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Relationship, Very Mild Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29409777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/favefangirl/pseuds/maddy_does
Summary: Nothing about Baz's summer is going well. His internship has fallen through, he's being forced to work at his step-mother's coffee shop instead, and he's getting far too attached to the clumsy barista who works with him. Not even Fiona can keep him sane through this one.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36
Collections: Snowbaz Sweethearts Fic Exchange 2021





	i hear your ship is comin' in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelsfalling16](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsfalling16/gifts).



> as part of the [snowbaz sweethearts exchange](https://snowbaz-sweethearts-exchange.tumblr.com/). you said you liked coffee shops and soulmates, so this is what i came up with. i hope you like it lovely <3
> 
> betaed by the absolutely incredible [@flammable-grimm-pitch](https://flammable-grimm-pitch.tumblr.com/) who is frankly too amazing for words!!
> 
> even so, all mistakes are likely still my own
> 
> title is taken from anchor by novo amor

Before his father remarried, Baz used to live in a big house with his parents by the sea. He loved the sea growing up, loved watching the waves in the storm, bearing witness to the might of the water. Sometimes he could see boats in the distance from his bedroom windows, little specks in the vast expanse of blue. He would watch as they bounced along the horizon until they were out of sight, dreaming of sailors and lighthouses and all the millions of miles of ocean to be explored.

He never much liked the sand. He didn’t like how it felt between his toes, nor how it would blow into his mouth when they went for walks on windy days. It would get trapped in his pockets for weeks afterwards, however often he washed his clothes. And once, when he was very young, he was sitting on the beach watching his sea up close when a crab trundled over and snapped him on the finger. It hurt and he bled. He ran to his mum after it had happened and she’d put a plaster on the wound, sealing it with a kiss, and telling him he was a really brave boy for not crying. His father, across the room reading the newspaper, had sniffed but said nothing.

It wasn’t all bad though. He’d go on walks and find things in the sand - shells, little toys, worms. He liked to go digging around to see what he could find. Sometimes he found jewellery - earrings and necklaces and even the occasional ring. He would take them back to the house, have the housekeeper sanitise them for him, then give them to his mother. She would smile and kiss his cheek and put it on. She would wear it for maybe a week before it was never seen again, but at the time Baz was so young that a week felt like an eternity, so he always appreciated the gesture.

The day he learned of his mother’s death, he went to sit on the beach. He stared out at the sea and listened to the waves and the breeze in conversation with one another and felt completely numb. It was a grey afternoon, no sun to gleam across the water and make it shine like diamonds - that was always Baz’s favourite time of day. He sat on the beach for hours before he heard a loud car engine by the house and knew his aunt Fiona would have arrived. He got up to go home and when he did he saw something glint in the sand. He stopped and crouched down to inspect it. 

It was a necklace, he noticed, a silver chain with a pendant attached. At first he thought it was a diamond, but when he brushed some sand away, he saw that it had a curved top and a pointed bottom. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he was compelled to pick it up anyway by a force he couldn’t explain. As he held it up and watched it turn in the breeze, for a moment the clouds parted and the sun shone through, glinting onto the necklace and making it glimmer. Inexplicably, Baz felt himself getting choked up, and even after the clouds filled the sky with grey once more as though nothing happened, he felt like it was a sign. He shoved the necklace into his pocket and went up to the house.

They lived in the house - he and his father in far too much space that still, somehow, felt suffocating - for a few years after that, until his father met Daphne and decided to move to the city so she could be close to her work. In all those years, Baz didn’t go back to the beach. It was like there was an invisible force which, anytime he walked through the door with the intention of seeing the sea, stopped him in his tracks and forced him back. He couldn’t explain it, but never questioned it. 

He’d taken the necklace he’d found to the housekeeper, and she’d cleaned it like she had with all the other trinkets he’d found in the sand. When she handed it back to him, she looked so immensely sad, Baz avoided her for the rest of the week. He put the necklace on that evening and stood in front of his mirror. He liked it, the way it hung down his chest just to the left of his heart. He wore it to bed, and hasn’t taken it off since.

He didn’t mind moving away. He hated the beach. The seagulls would cry all hours of the day, and the wind would thrash the waves so loudly in storms he could never concentrate on anything else. And his mother was everywhere, the ghost of her lurking around every corner in photographs, and the spice rack, and her coat, still hanging in the hallway waiting for the owner to come and claim it who never would.

He decided he quite liked the city. It was anonymous, the looming buildings made him feel like he wasn’t too big for his own body, and there was nothing of his mother in any of it. He was close to his aunt, too, which meant he could show up on her doorstep whenever his father, or the children, or playing happy-families got to be too much and he needed the space to breathe. Fiona would make them both coffee, and Baz would pretend not to see her slip whiskey in hers. They didn’t talk much, but in a way that was the beauty of it. He couldn’t have coped if she’d made him open up about his feelings. 

The city was good for his father, too, though he took very little interest in most of what Malcolm Grimm had to say. There were a lot of investment opportunities, though how the Grimm company went from the largest agricultural exporter in Britain to owning a series of coffee shops in central London, Baz would never be able to understand. He had his suspicions that Daphne was the real brains behind the operation, but never asked. He couldn’t be bothered to feign interest in his father’s work, on top of university, trying to manage a social life, and keeping the closet door closed.

In hindsight, he wishes he had paid a little more attention to his father’s plans, given that he’s once more stood in front of a mirror, looking absolutely ridiculous. 

“This is humiliating,” he complains, catching Fiona’s eye in his reflection.

“It’s work, Baz. Everyone does it.” She sounds reasonable, but has barely stopped cackling since he walked through the door.

Baz looks himself back over. He doesn’t know who designed this uniform, but evidently they didn’t possess a modicum of taste. The plain, black trousers are reasonable. They’re not tailored and so they flare out at the ankles more than he’s comfortable with, but they’re not terrible. The shirt is, apparently, grey, but looks more like something that was once white and didn’t get dry cleaned properly. The apron looks like the pinafore Mordelia wears to school. It’s plain dark grey, boxy, has two deep pockets on the front, and cuts off just above mid-thigh. It’s the bowtie Baz finds particularly offensive, not least because Daphne insists on calling it a dickie bow. 

“You look fine,” Fiona insists, even as she’s forced to bite down against the grin that is very obviously threatening to spread across her face. “When you get there, everyone’ll be wearing it, so you’ll not look out of place.”

“Remind me again why I’m doing this,” Baz mumbles, purely rhetorically.

“Character building,” Fiona replies easily, reaching around him to straighten the bow tie. “It’ll be good to get some grunt work under your belt.”

Baz isn’t convinced. He’s sure his father is just looking for some free labour, and since Baz’s summer internship fell through last minute, he’s available for this so-called “character building”. He’s going to be miserable, he can already tell. He’s in the world’s least flattering uniform about to do a six hour shift _for free_ in the middle of August, when he could be travelling, or revising, or bingeing Netflix. Worst still, he knows the clientele are going to be just like him - just as pretentious, just as pedantic. It’s going to be horrendous. 

He arrives at the shop (Deja Brew, _Jesus Christ_ ) to find Daphne there waiting for him. He forces a smile, but her grin is genuine. She straightens his tie (even though it’s already immaculate) then ushers him into the building. Inside he’s assaulted by the strong scent of coffee, underlined by the repugnant stench of bleach. He makes his way over to where a group of people wearing the same abysmal uniform as him are sat. There are two women, one younger with her hair tied back into a messy bun, and a heavy layer of blush on her cheeks, and the other other with ear-length blonde hair and a tattoo peeking out of the collar of her apron. Sat on the table next to them is a boy. He looks about Baz’s age, with curly blonde hair and a golden complexion. He turns his big, blue eyes to Baz and Baz’s breath catches.

“Hello lovely people,” Daphne greets, joining the four of them at the table. She wraps an arm around Baz. “This is our new worker bee, Baz.” She squeezes his shoulder and smiles at him expectantly. He manages a curt nod, and either Daphne doesn’t see his lack of enthusiasm, or she chooses to ignore it. “Ebb will be able to show you how everything here works,” Daphne explains, gesturing to the tattooed woman, “and Agatha and Simon will be available to answer any questions you might have.” Agatha looks him up and down and quirks an eyebrow at Ebb, whilst Simon furrows his eyebrows at him. “Alighty then, I’ll see you all later.” She gives Baz’s shoulder another squeeze, just for good measure, before disappearing back out of the shop.

Baz watches her leave before turning back around to his new colleagues. He looks at Ebb who smiles at him, but there’s something in her eye he doesn’t trust, something like the look Fiona gets before she’s about to say or do something Baz doesn’t like. “Right then,” she says with a smile, pushing herself up from the table, “Let’s get you trained!”

Baz very quickly learns that Ebb is a sadist - in fact they all are. First she teaches him how to wipe down the tables, even though they’re all already clean. Then she has him vacuum the floor whilst she, Agatha and Simon get the cakes for the day plated out. The _linoleum_ floor. Finally, just before opening, as Agatha sets up the steamer, and Simon does the heavy lifting bringing the cups in from the store room, she gets him to polish the tables _once more_ . She argues that’s it better to be safe than sorry when it comes to hygiene, but seems to imply he’s too incompetent to have possibly done it right the first time. He’s then told merely to _observe_ as Agatha and Simon work, and that he should be smart enough to figure it out. He doesn't point out the contradiction.

The day feels like a complete waste of time, the only highlight (an apprehensive description) being at around noon when Fiona comes into the shop. She smiles when she sees Baz standing behind the counter. She begins to approach, then freezes when Ebb emerges from the store cupboard with a mop and bucket. There’s a minute or so of intense eye contact, before Ebb is thrusting the mop into Baz’s chest, muttering something about cleaning upstairs, and hurrying back into the cupboard.

Fiona follows Baz up as he goes to clean, and as soon as he feels they’re out of ear shot from downstairs, he demands, "What the hell was up with that?”

Fiona’s blushing, he notices with sadistic glee. “Ebb and I maybe have a … history.” Her nose twitches and she sucks in her cheeks, turning away.

Baz can’t contain his laughter as he begins to mop the floor. “So I’m being bullied at work because you couldn’t keep it in your pants?” She turns to face him with a perfect death stare. “You’re too much.”

She raises a Pitch eyebrow at him. “And what about you? I saw you drooling over the bloke downstairs.” Baz sniffs and pretends like he needs to focus on the mopping. “Good God man, pull it together.”

He tries not to think on it too hard as he works, except Simon is exactly his type, and they both know it. He’s all limbs, is the problem. Gangly arms, and legs too long for his body. He walks somewhere in the realm of Bambi, and looks far too attractive doing so. Baz is lucky he has Ebb’s orders to _observe_ as an excuse for all his staring, otherwise he’d be in serious trouble. He tells himself it’s just a fleeting crush, and that he’s had plenty of those before, as he mops the floor in the knowledge he’s a liar.

Once he's done as good a job as he feels is needed, he finally looks up to see her leaning against the wall at the top of the stairs. “Sorry, was there something you needed?”

She tilts her head at him. “I want a macchiato.”

“Well you’re in the right place,” He replies, nodding for her to go downstairs.

“I want _you_ to make it for me. Grande. Take out.” She flashes him a grin and tosses a wink over her shoulder before descending the stairs, cackling. 

Baz has to stand and take a breath before following her down, reminding himself that he loves his aunt, even if he is thinking murderous thoughts at her right now. “It’s _large,_ ” he points out, but only once she’s too far down the stairs to hear him.

He walks through the store room to empty the mop into the drain outside the backdoor, and sees Ebb watching through the window of the office. He frowns at her and she scurries away, busying herself at the desk. Baz just shakes his head at her and goes back into the shop, where Fiona is leaning against the counter. Agatha, looking bored, is replacing a coffee filter, but Simon is stood at the till, looking somewhere between awestruck and terrified. He swallows as she looks him up and down, a laborious process, and one of the showiest things Baz has ever seen. 

He walks over to them and asks, “Can you show me how to make a macchiato?”

Simon jumps and simply nods, as though too afraid to speak. Fiona snickers from her side of the counter, then holds her hands up in mock surrender when Baz throws a glare her way before following Simon to the coffee machine. Simon takes a step towards the machine, inhales like he’s about to say something, then steps back. He presses his hands together, takes another step forward, frowns, and steps back again. Baz watches him, barely suppressing an eyeroll, and wondering how on earth he’d gotten hired. 

He’s watched Simon and Agatha making drinks all day, and is pretty sure he knows how everything works. Besides, if this idiot can do it, it can’t be that hard. He waits for Simon to stop frowning and turn to look at him. He opens his mouth again as if to speak, then closes it and pulls a face.

“Macchiato…”

“Macchiato, right.” Simon replies, nodding frantically. He points to the coffee grounds with both fingers. “Coffee first.”

Baz sucks in his cheeks and goes about pressing the coffee. He feels Simon watching over his shoulder the whole time, but manages not to snap at him for it - _just_. As he twists the pressed coffee into the machine, Simon takes a step closer, breathing heavily right by his ear (a mouth breather, of course). Baz presses his lips together more tightly as he catches the scent of Simon’s deodorant over the smell of coffee beans.

“Now cup,” Simon says, nodding at where the cups are stacked by the machine. Baz forces a tight smile at him, before placing a cup under the machine. “Right, yes, now--”

“I think I’ve got it,” Baz interrupts, voice strained as he slides the machine on. “Milk.”

“Yeah, well done,” Simon praises - and the worst part is, it seems like he’s not even _trying_ to patronise.

Baz grabs a pitcher and pours a little milk into it. He then moves over to the frother, places the pitcher under it, and switches it on. He hates the sound of the screeching milk frother, and grits his teeth against it until he deems he’s done enough. He flicks off both the frother and the coffee machine as the cup fills. He moves the cup out from under the machine and places it down. He’s just about to pour the milk over the coffee when Simon grabs his wrist.

“You need to tap the milk to get the bubbles out,” he says, trying to draw Baz’s hand away from the coffee. Even through his shirt-sleeve, the warmth of Simon’s palm bleeds into his skin.

“It’s fine,” Baz denies, wanting to get this over with and get Fiona - whose eyes he can feel tracking him from behind the counter - to leave.

“No,” Simon insists, giving up on Baz’s arm and trying to grab the pitcher instead. “You need to!”

“Simon--” Baz warns as Simon tries to grab the pitcher from his hand. He really isn’t being paid enough for this rubbish, he’s not being paid _at all_ , and so with a heavy sigh he lets go.

Unfortunately, it’s at that moment that Simon lets go as well. The pitcher drops to the floor between them, splashing milk onto both of their legs, and spilling across the linoleum. Baz closes his eyes and sucks in his cheeks, knowing Fiona has just seen the whole thing, and also knowing exactly who will be cleaning this mess up.

Ebb, probably having heard the clang, emerges from the office. She looks between Simon, Baz, the pitcher (and, poignantly, _not_ Fiona), before shaking her head and retreating back to the office. Simon’s looking down at the milk like he’s going to cry, and somewhere distantly he thinks he can hear Fiona cackling about the whole, miserable situation.

The milk is just the beginning. Simon is an idiot - utterly incompetent, and without even a hint of self-awareness about it. He’s clumsy; spilling liquids and knocking over plates, banging into everything in the store room like he’s _aiming_ for it; he’s loud, trying to whisper with Agatha, but always being three decibels or so above shouting; he’s angry, cursing, pulling at his hair when a coffee goes wrong, growling and huffing and generally not saying anything when a grunt will do. Baz hates him. Or, Baz wishes he hated him. He finds it all endearing, God help him. 

He reckons it’s just because Simon is pretty, and because beyond the rough edges, he’s actually kind. Something about the way Agatha and Ebb dote on him helps soften Baz a little, too, though he can’t quite understand why. But Simon _is_ pretty. He has a nice laugh, and when Simon tugs on his hair, Baz always feels this alien temptation to run his own fingers through to soothe it. He never does - never _would_ , knows he’s infinitely creepy for even letting the thought cross his mind! But the golden curls look soft, and Baz is a weak, weak man.

Baz copes though. He mentally self-flagellates every time he finds his thoughts drifting into a dangerous territory, and he never once snaps about being left with the grunt work - however much he hates it. He even finds a companion in Agatha, who seems to find the whole thing as tiresome as Baz does. She’s just earning money to go travelling with next year. The 9-to-5 of uni just isn’t for her. Baz can respect that. He doesn’t understand it, unsure how he’d survive without structure in his life, but he can respect it for sure.

Ebb, despite her misplaced hatred (not that Baz thinks it’s hatred, more likely heartbreak. He can’t get Fiona to tell the story, and Ebb just goes stonily silent whenever Baz mentions his aunt’s name, so that’s a no go, but Ebb isn’t malicious by nature, so she must have been hurt pretty bad to still feel like this), is actually pretty cool. She makes these funky, hybrid coffee drinks, and could speak for hours about the amazing adventures she and her brother went on when they were Baz’s age, and once when she’d rolled up the sleeves of her work shirt to unclog the sink, he’d seen the expanse of tattoos up her arms. They looked like treasure maps, dotted lines trailing this way and that, and Baz was slightly mesmerised by them.

He copes, but Fiona is insufferable. For all that she won’t talk about her own love life, she can’t seem to shut up about his. She constantly prods and pokes about how _in luuuuuurve_ he is with Simon, and when will he make a move, and what hat will she wear to his wedding day. She thinks she’s hilarious. She’s the only one. He tries teasing her back about Ebb, but she gets all weird and silent, and Baz feels a bit bad for her.

Fiona’s pestering doesn’t help his growing feelings though. It doesn’t squash the fleeting hope he feels every time he catches Simon staring at him, or when Ebb looks at them both with what appears vaguely to be a knowing look. It doesn’t help Baz remind himself that, first of all, the likelihood that Simon is both a) interested in men, and b) interested in him specifically is very, very low, and second of all, that at the end of the summer, Baz is going back to uni and Simon’s going … wherever Simon goes when he’s not at the coffee shop. Baz is struck by how little he knows about him beyond who he is when he’s making rich white people coffee. Agatha rides horses, and makes art, and plans her travels. Ebb works with LGBT youth in the city, and goes to visit her cousin’s goat farm every other weekend, and complains about how the single life means she’s no one to warm her feet up on at night. But Simon is an enigma.

He decides to ask about it the next time they’re alone cleaning together. Simon frowns at him, all suspicion. “I just asked what you do when you’re not here, Simon,” Baz tries to placate, but it comes out more of a sneer.

“Why?” Simon asks, eyebrows bunching together as he leans on the top of the mop.

“I’m trying to pass the time,” Baz replies flippantly as he sprays the next table with disinfectant. He’s trying hard to play it off like this isn’t all he’s been able to think about for the past three days.

He hears the shrug in Simon’s voice as he replies, “I dunno. I play football sometimes. I mostly hang out with my friend Penny. She brings me books on astrology from the library where she works, because I lost my library card in one of the homes I stayed in a couple of years ago.”

“Astrology?” Baz asks, a little sharp as his mind trips over _homes_.

It immediately sets Simon on the defence as he straightens his spine and glares at Baz like he’s something distasteful he’s found on the bottom of his shoe. “It’s science. It’s interesting.”

Baz wants to explain that, no, he didn’t mean it like that. He thinks astrology is pretty cool, or he’d think it was if it were Simon telling him about it, however much he might not describe it as a science. But it’s too late, because Simon is already stomping off to the store room, and he knows he’s gone and blown it. He sighs heavily, leaning against the table, and rolls his eyes to the sky. From somewhere next to him, he hears a snort, and when he looks over, Ebb is descending the stairs reading the inventory folder.

“You’re a hopeless cause, Pitch,” Ebb teases as she passes, and Baz doesn’t even begin to try and dissect the strange, uncomfortable mixture of feelings he experiences at the name. Ebb turns to face him just before she enters the store room. “Don’t wait too long, yeah,” she adds, melancholic, before heading into the office. Baz thinks he sees her crying.

He spends the next week slightly dumbfounded by that, so much that he doesn’t even tease Fiona about her hopeless love life, nor does he find himself getting riled at work when he’s given the most mundane of tasks while Agatha and Simon trip over each other at rush hours to make more coffees than is reasonable for two people alone.

He isn’t entirely sure what it is about Ebb’s words that have affected him so much, but as he watches Simon bustle around making coffees, drawing smiley faces on kids cups, and writing terrible jokes on the cups of girls who look like they’re having a bad day, Baz has the uneasy sense that perhaps it’s because he likes Simon a lot more than he intended to - and a lot more than he’s even willing to admit to himself.

It was inevitable that the whole thing was going to blow up in his face. His every waking moment is spent thinking about Simon, watching Simon, and then trying to get his head to just quieten for one moment! Fiona, smug and vindictive, rubs it in how distracted he is. She’s able to see right through him every time he denies that it has anything at all to do with Simon. He’s so caught up in his own head, he forgets to even tease her back about Ebb.

They’re both closing up the day that Baz’s crisis reaches its crescendo. Baz is mopping the floor as Simon cleans out the coffee grinder. The silence stretching between them gives Baz far too much time to think, and so he flounders mentally for a way to start a conversation.

“Have you read anything about astrology, lately?” Baz asks, thinking back to their conversation from a few weeks ago. He’s hoping to convey how he wasn’t mocking Simon for his interests, but evidently he fails on that front as Simon’s spine straightens, and he turns his head to face Baz with a sharp frown etched into his face.

“Why are you always such an ass?” Simon demands.

Baz is taken about by the accusatory tone, and barely manages a huffed, “What?” in response.

“You walk around like you’re so much better than everyone else. You make fun of customers, and you sneer at Ebb’s tattoos, and you laugh at Agatha wanting to travel.” Simon replies. His instantaneous answer makes Baz think that maybe he’s been holding this rant in for a while. He wonders how much Simon has been watching him back. “You’re always there, glaring at me, thinking I’m dumb and stupid. You _can_ just be nice, you know!”

Baz is shocked into silence. No- This is all wrong! Again, Baz flounders for some kind of denial, but he can think of nothing, and Simon is marching over to him, staring him down. His mind always goes just a little bit blank in Simon’s orbit. It’s frankly an embarrassment. Simon is so close, Baz can just about catch his deodorant again…

“If you don’t want to be here, then don’t be, but some of us are perfectly happy without you coming along and making everything miserable.” Simon accuses, sounding more petulant now than he had before.

“This is an unpaid, crappy Summer job I’m working to do my step-mother a favour,” Baz spits, not sure how to respond to this frankly astonishing situation, and settling on a comfortable bitterness. “I don’t care enough about any of you to let you occupy as much of my time as I clearly do of yours. Get a hobby, Simon, like everyone else.” He hopes Simon doesn’t catch the blatant lie.

Simon’s eyebrows furrow, and Baz has his suspicions it’s because he’s inadvertently insulted Agatha and Ebb as well. Baz expects more harsh words from Simon. This is the most he’s ever heard him speak in one go without resorting to unintelligible grunts, and as peeved as he is, the novelty isn’t lost on him. 

It’s a shock when he feels the force hit his chest. Simon pushed him. The first Baz knows of it is a pain in his sternum and the blur as he falls. He isn’t too surprised to grab hold of Simon on his way down, though. They tumble to the ground and land with a thud. They knock the mop and bucket over in the process. It spills water across the floor which soaks into Baz’s shirt.

Baz looks up to find Simon on top of him. Their faces are inches apart. He looks into Simon’s eyes and sees them an expanse blue, with little specks in the iris. His head lurches with the memory, somehow more painful than the fall. He looks down at where Simon is piled on top of him, and notices his necklace has come free from where it was tucked into his shirt collar. He sucks in a breath at the sight of it, clicked into a nearly identical chain around Simon’s neck, the two metal pendants fitting together to form a heart.

Roughly, Baz pushes Simon off of him. Simon goes easily, landing in the puddle on the floor, seemingly just as shell-shocked as Baz. Baz’s heart is pounding. His blood is rushing in his ears. He feels the tell-tale sting of tears in his eyes. God, he’s not cried since he lost his mother. Unsteady, he half-stumbles, half-runs out of the shop. He isn’t sure where to go. He isn’t sure he can breathe. 

His feet take him to Fiona’s without any prompting from his head, because his mind is swirling. He still feels the phantom brush of Simon’s breath against his cheeks, every time he closes his eyes he sees Simon’s, wide and bright, staring back at him. They’d been so close - all it would’ve taken was for one of them to turn their head _just so_ , and they would have been kissing. God, he could’ve kissed him!

He bangs hard on Fiona’s door once he reaches her flat. The neighbours are no doubt wondering what the hell is going on, and under normal circumstances, he might even have cared. Fiona opens the door, already demanding to know what the hell is going on, but he barely registers it, pushing her aside and making straight for her kitchen. He knows where she keeps the good stuff.

He grabs the bottle of Smirnoff from the cupboard, and a glass for civility’s sake. He’s just about to pour himself a generous estimate of a shot, when Fiona’s hand grabs his wrist and stops him. He stares at the glass for another minute, psyching himself up, before finally meeting her eye. She’s wearing the same distressed, wrecked, desperate look she had just after his mother had died. He takes a breath that finally feels like his lungs are working. 

“Baz,” she sighs, eyebrows furrowing as she shakes her head. “What’s wrong?” Baz swallows thickly and places the bottle on the counter. Content that he isn’t about to do something stupid, she lets go of his wrist. “Vodka? At three thirty on a Tuesday? What’s _wrong_?” She presses.

Baz opens his mouth to answer, but before he can there’s a knock at the door, this one far more courteous than Baz had been. Fiona rolls her eyes as she goes to answer it. Baz takes one last, half-longing look into the clear liquid, before screwing the cap on the bottle and putting it back. There’s still time to drink himself in a stupor to drown his sorrows later, he justifies. He puts the glass away, too, still a little shaky, then stops with a start when he turns and sees Ebb standing behind him in Fiona’s kitchen. Fiona seems just as surprised as he is.

“Simon is upset,” Ebb says simply. She’s standing stiff with her hands clasped in front of her. Ebb is usually loose and relaxed in every situation, so it’s jarring to see her so tense now. 

Baz nods in response, but can’t quite find the words. He’ll take upset, he supposes. So long as it isn’t angry, or disgusted. He can only imagine how desperate he’d looked in Simon’s eyes as he’d laid there with Simon’s weight on top of him, somehow still managing to relish in the closeness, even as everything felt like it was crumbling at the periphery. 

Ebb presses her lips together, takes a deep breath, then goes on, “I’ve watched you two dance around each other for weeks. Staring at each other across the room, neither one of you brave enough to make the first move, then overcompensating with animosity.” She laughs, almost fond. “You’re both disasters, honestly.” But then she’s suddenly sober again, and after a half-glance back at Fiona behind her, she goes on. “But I know better than most how easy it is to wait too long and find you’re too late when you finally get your act together.” Over Ebb’s shoulder, Baz sees Fiona shift and tense. “He’s gone to the beach just outside the city. You can sit and wallow and wonder ‘what if’ forever, or you can take the chance.”

Baz looks at her kind, sad eyes. She’s Fiona’s age, early thirties at most, but she seems older - her presence feels like some wise, ancient being, equally powerful and beautiful and gentle. Baz is inexplicably fond of her, and when he looks at Fiona over Ebb’s shoulder, he sees that same profound affection reflected back in his aunt’s eyes. He thinks he’s not the only disaster around here.

“What if you’re wrong?” Baz asks.

He’s watched Simon for all these weeks, feeling his heart swell with an emotion he never wanted, and which he knew would always only ever bring him pain. Simon is too good to be true. He’s rough around the edges, coarse, with questionable etiquette and poor communications skills. There’s nothing logical about the way Baz likes him anyway. Nor the way he feels himself teetering on the edge of even more. But Simon is kind. There’s a lot of Ebb about him, actually. Powerful, beautiful, gentle. To think for a moment that Simon might feel the same would be too self-indulgent, even for Baz.

Ebb raises an eyebrow at him, but it’s Fiona who speaks. “If you don’t try you’ll never know.” Both Baz and Ebb turn to face her, equally surprised by her contribution. She shrugs under the scrutiny. “I read it in a fortune cookie,” is her only explanation, and with Ebb’s unbearably fond smile in response, Baz knows what he has to do.

He doesn’t need to ask which beach; intrinsically, he knows. He calls an Uber, because Fiona would die before letting Baz drive her car. He can barely sit still the whole journey, bouncing his leg and fiddling with his fingers. He feels like he’s at the climax of some terrible Netflix teen movie, the hero rushing to confess his true love, or something equally as sappy. But then, he is sappy, God help him.

He gets out of the car and takes a moment to look up at the house he’d once known as home. It looks tired in the late-afternoon sun. Slightly dilapidated, as though it hasn’t been cared for well enough. The garden is no longer immaculate, and the fence is chipped with paint as far as Baz can see. His mother would be turning in her grave at the sight. But he isn’t here for exterior decorating, so he makes his way down to the path which leads onto the beach.

He sees Simon pretty quickly, tossing pebbles out into the sea. There are no boats on the horizon, just a hazy line where the ocean meets the sky, and then out into infinity. Baz has to clench his fists at his sides to keep himself going forward. It feels like a million years since he’s last been here, and he isn’t nostalgic for the memories. He reaches Simon who’s sat cross-legged on top of his pinafore. His bow tie hangs loose around his neck, and the top buttons of his shirt are undone. Baz is still in his uniform, and he’s glad of the sun in hopes it’ll dry him off.

“Ebb said you were here,” Baz says by way of greeting. Simon looks down and nods, picking at a stray strand of cotton on his trousers. Baz looks out at the ocean. “I used to live here,” he adds, because he isn’t sure what else there is to say.

“I lived in town,” Simon replies. It’s after a stretch of silence, so long that Baz wondered if either of them were ever going to speak again. “With my mum before she died.” At that, Baz looks down to face him. He sees his jaw clenched. “We would walk down here most days. This was where she told me she was dying.” 

Baz thinks he sees a tear trickle down Simon’s cheek, but it’s wiped away as quickly as it appears, and Baz doesn’t say anything, even as his own eyes begin to well up. Simon reaches into his open shirt and pulls out the necklace. He holds the pendant in a tightly coiled fist, and Baz’s knuckles ache to do the same. He takes a shaky breath to steady himself, and sits down. He hugs his legs to his chest and stares out at the sea the way he had when his mother died.

“We both had a chain,” Simon goes on. “She lost hers that day.”

Baz closes his eyes but the tears fall anyway. They sit in silence for a long time after that, wallowing in their own grief. Baz feels the sun warming his face like a gentle kiss the way he’d always enjoyed as a child, and there’s something in the air that has the inexplicable feel of his mother. He clears his throat and opens his eyes.

“Maybe it was written in the stars,” he suggests.

Simon’s features harden. “Why do you have to be such a prat?” He spits, frowning.

Baz can’t believe Simon still can’t see he’s being genuine, but then considers that he never has been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. After he lost his mother, he spent years learning to mimic his father’s emotionless expression, spending hours in front of mirrors, and carefully crafting a cool tone. Perhaps it isn’t such a surprise that Simon can’t read the way he really feels.

“My mother died when I was young, too,” Baz explains, trying to let his guard down, even though it feels like the least natural thing in the world. Distantly, he can hear Ebb’s warning about waiting too long, and figures now is as good a time as any to learn to be honest. “We would sit on the beach together. The day she died I found this necklace.” He reaches into his shirt and pulls out the other half of Simon’s chain. “I don’t even know why I picked it up. I used to take anything pretty I found back for my mother, but there was no one there to take this.”

Simon watches him carefully, uncertain, but his features have softened a little, and Baz will take any small win he can get. “I’m sorry,” Simon says, almost too softly to be heard over the sound of the waves. “About you losing your mum, I’m sorry.”

“Likewise,” Baz replies, eyeing the necklace hanging around Simon’s throat. “I meant it, though. Maybe it was written in the stars.”

Simon looks at him for a moment, weighing him up, before he tentatively reaches out a hand. He finds Baz’s on the sand where he’s leaning on it, and twines their little fingers together. Baz feels his heart soar and stomach fall out from beneath him in equal measures. Simon offers a cautious, but ultimately blinding smile, and it does nothing to help Baz’s predicament. He stares into Simon’s deep, blue eyes and sees something even more infinite than the ocean.

**Author's Note:**

>  _[this](https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32851784874.html)_ is what the uniform is meant to look like and _[this](https://swoine.tumblr.com/post/640517670906839040/sis-doesnt-know-knightstactical-samanthasmiless)_ is where i got part of the inspo from.
> 
> i can't believe i've never written a coffee shop au before in 5 years writing fic? i feel like i've finally graduated or something!
> 
> anyway, if you wanna leave a comment or a kudos they're much appreciated! especially let me know if there's something you think i forgot to tag! 
> 
> i'm taking prompts! if you're interested please drop the prompt in the comments below. if you do send a prompt be prepared for me to take fifty years to fill it because uni is so hard, but i promise i'll try! come say hi on tumblr: [@maddy-does](https://maddy-does.tumblr.com/)
> 
> thanks for reading, have a wonderful existence.


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